The explanation

Credit: Verdulia 

 

There is *something* strange about the alleged "migrant crisis" at the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in North Africa. For starters, all of the migrants are young, able-bodied men. Second, most of them are Moroccans, not migrants from West Africa. Morocco is, of course, next door to Ceuta. Third, in an interview with a foreign news outlet, one of the Moroccan "migrants" stated: "So we heard that the border is open. We quit our jobs and went over here". 

You...quit your day job on a whim to enter the territory of a potentially hostile nation? I see. 

Fourth, about half of the "migrants" have returned home to Morocco (maybe they had to show up for work on Friday morning?), apperently when they realized that all shops and cafés in Ceuta were closed!

So what´s actually going on here? The most likely explanation is that we´re dealing with a more rowdy version of the Green March, the large-scale civilian Moroccan incursion into West Sahara in 1975. Indeed, the situation at Ceuta might be directly connected to West Sahara, a former Spanish colony disputed between Morocco and a resistance movement known as the Polisario Front.

Apparently, the Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez recently visited Algeria, which still backs Polisario. To show their displeasure, Morocco orchestrated the "migrant crisis" at Ceuta, knowing fully well how Spain´s European Union allies would react. As in: react very badly...to Spain! The government of Sánchez is widely seen as the weak link in the EU´s (purported) new and tougher stance against mass immigration. Morocco is sending a signal that they have leverage over Spain and perhaps the entire Schengen agreement. The fact that Ceuta is a Spanish-controlled territory on Moroccan soil might, of course, be an additional cause for the displeasure.

Russia and Belarus has previously weaponized the migrant crisis to create problems for the EU, and now it seems Morocco is doing the same thing, although in their case it´s not even migrants sensu stricto.

We´ll see how this pans out in the upcoming days, but I wouldn´t be surprised if Sánchez is voted out of office because of this. If the Moroccans are going to like his replacement is perhaps another matter entirely...